Quantifying Quality

Adapting UMT Audit to easily measure and co-relate quality assurance and performance output for individual employees, resulting in an increase in accuracy, performance and productivity.

Summary

When Veteran Curtis Gregory completed his service as a Navy Pilot in 2007, he started his business providing custom glass pieces for various occasions. The company started with him engraving glasses in his garage and has grown significantly in less
than 10 years to a company with over 40 employees.

As the company grew it was apparent that as an owner and CEO he was unable to spend as much time on the floor as he used to and soon noticed a growing disparity in performance and output. Gregory decided that he needed to understand the performance
rates of his growing team.

An online search led employees at Glass with a Twist to UMT Audit, “we liked that the software could be customized specifically to fit our needs” said Gregory. With UMT Audit the company can now easily measure and co-relate quality assurance
and performance output for each individual employee. With increased accountability has come an increase in accuracy, performance and productivity.

Challenge

Creating custom glassware is a multi-step complex process. At Glass With a Twist an order will come in that will be designed by their graphics team and then sheets are printed to mask the individual glasses. The production workers hand-place the masking
sheets on each glass to ensure only the unmasked areas are sand blasted with the design. Masking placement and amount of pressure applied is crucial to avoiding errors. After masking is complete the glasses are individually sandblasted, cleaned
then tested for quality assurance and sent to customers.

Gregory noticed a variance in performance within the production workers at the various stages, and was noticing that defect glasses were not being properly reported. “We wanted a way to track quality assurance and quantify work being done in order to increase accountability and reward dedicated employees” he explained.

Solution

Glass with a Twist is now set up with two tablets running UMT Audit to quickly score and grade glasses while attributing each process to individual workers. The data is dumped into a variety of custom reports designed specifically for them to show
production rates per employee and review quality assurance statistics.

They have the system set up so that once the maskers have a tray ready for sandblasting a supervisor will use UMT Audit on their tablet to verify the Masker’s name, the amount and type of glass, and the tray number. Once glasses have been sandblasted
and cleaned, they are evaluated again to ensure the same amount of glasses that went in came out and that all defects are accounted for. On this second tablet, they record the tray number, the sandblaster, masker and glass count. The tablet prompts
users to account for defects and apply a score for glass cleanliness. The two-tablet control system allows the company to ensure that the correct employees are credited for the proper work, even as the decorating process takes place in multiple
steps.

From the data collected on the tablets, the team can generate weekly reports that are shared with employees so they can see for themselves their own production rates. “The employees can actually see week to week trends in what kind of defects are happening and they can work to overcome them” said Gregory. Employee activity is now linked directly to output performance bonuses, giving workers control over their own pay.

Results

Gregory reports that he has seen “real improvement overnight”. A month prior to initiating UMT Audit he had tracked the defects of the group as a whole and calculated that the total group throw away averaged 12%. This
error rate was cut in half to 6%, or a 94% accuracy rating. The UMT Audit solution enabled the team to track individual accuracy ratings “simply knowing they were being held accountable cut the error rate in half” said Curtis.

Now, with the various custom reports that Laubrass has put in place for him, the company can quickly see the baseline cost per good glass according to employee, including factors for speed and accuracy as well as labor and loss, these numbers directly
affect employee pay. “It makes it fair and it is win-win. The company is now more productive and employees are now more in control of their own pay.”

Gregory says he would recommend Laubrass products “everyone on the team is always extremely responsive and they deliver solutions that are accurate and on time.” He appreciates the support received and the custom nature
of the product, “it does just what we need it to.”